Government is/or soon will be outdated

Basically Government or soon will become more of an evil then it is a good. It is or soon will be become un-necessary due to the abilities of business. A governmental system can be removed with the only the judiciary system remaining. Government played a role in our lives when ethics and morality were still undefined as well a technology was still in its infancy. Now that communication has moved to the public and morality is common we have entered a new age.

Dec 5 2012:
Hi Zman.
I couldn't dissagree with you more. The fiscal debacles of the last decade must be proof enough of that. I know it often seems as though the representatives we elect and the governance they provide us are flawed, but in a democracy that is mostly because we allow them to be.
Your utopian idea that our lives would be better served by unfettered business than elected governent ... no way. I can't imagine any sillier principle for governance than profit. In fact, the worst aspect of the American system of government is that our elected representatives allow the interests of the rich to supercede the interests of people.
The Ayn Rand theory (yours, Zman) is that no government is the best government. Business, economy, health and welfare will regulate themselves by some magical principle I have never been able to grasp.
Now, let's look around the world and find a country that has virtually no government and see what it's like ... well, ... hmm ... In fact, I can't think of a single one in recent times. The last ungoverned societies must've been back in the paeleolithic era, before agriculture, before permanent settlement, when there were about a million people on Earth. That situation lasted for almost 100,000 years, and nothing much happened in terms of human development.
Ever since agriculture and permanent settlements took over as the human way of living, about 10,000 years ago, there has been government, some good, some bad. As the human population increased, local communities merged into larger and more compex societies and governance, too, gradually became larger and more complex. All of our modern day technologies, knowledge, wealth etc. have grown out of this progression.
From the million or so human beings that lived on Earth during the Paeleolithic we have now become seven billion. The thought that government will become obsolete as our societies and our lives get more and more complex is silly.

Dec 5 2012:
I used Rand because she was a pure fiction author. Rand was, by the way, twenty years older than Rothbard.

But right from J:B:Turbot and Adam Smith in the 18th century there has been an economic fiction that capitalism in an unregulated free market will lead to a better world. Well it didn't during the Quin dynasty in China, it didn't in 18th century USA or Europe, and it won't today. A capitalist system is inherently geared at only one thing, maximizing profits by controlling the market, and that means sidestepping competition by any means.

Dec 5 2012:
i was sloppy in my post, wanted to write mises, menger and back to bastiat. but then realized that they were minarchists, so settled with rothbard instead, the first true anarchist of this line.

meanwhile i recalled that rand was not even an anarchist, she was also a minarchist. anyway, if you want to attribute a world view to someone, attribute it to thinkers, and not novelists / sorta-philosophers. if one wants to understand how can people operate without a state, one needs to read no rand, but rather the thinkers i have mentioned.

Dec 5 2012:
Actually Adam Smith did not favor unregulated capitalism, ihe advocated for a government that keeps income inequality in check and takes care fo those who fall through the cracks of capitalism.

Unregulated capitalism as the answer to all problems is an idea from the 20th century. Ludwig Von Mises must have been a particularly heartless man since in 1900 there were still slums with abject poverty in them within walking distance from his prestigious Vienna University, a direct result of 19th century robber baron style unregulated capitalism. It's like someone who grew up in India defending the caste system.

Dec 5 2012:
Read them in depth, they are absolutely as much fiction writers as Rand. Anarchism, too, is a utopian fiction, just like communism ... look like tempting ideas on paper, but put them into pratice and they simply nurture the growth of despotism.

Dec 5 2012:
I wrote a paper years and years ago comparing (If I recall correctly) anarchist thinking of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Maréchal with Anarcho-capitalist thinking of Rothbard, Friedman (Milton, not David) and Hayek. Not a very good paper, I think, but I read them all - Menger too, I think ... don't recall Mises.

Dec 5 2012:
you did not answer the question. what constitutes as "in depth" reading of, say, rothbard? i suspect your knowledge on the issue is not that deep, if you list friedman as anarcho-capitalist. he was not even a minarchist, really. he wanted the government to manipulate money, which is the absolute core of a capitalist economy. also, mises is the beethoven of austrian ecnomics, so no recalling him is ... well, serves as a hint. i claim that your knowledge about anarcho-capitalism is not too deep.

But that won't be good enough for anarcho capitalists, they'll always say you haven't read enough if you don't agree with it, because they believe their theory is so perfect (make no mistake: they don't see it as the least worst system invented so far, as Adam Smith saw capitalism, but really as the flawless answer to every problem present and future, pretty much religious worship) that anyone who read it thoroughly must become hooked. It's also a debating tactic meant to make you give up, it's a bit like claiming that 1+1=5 and then saying that no one is qualified to comment on that until they've read your 863-page dissertation on why 1+1=5.

Dec 5 2012:
Sorry I'm not going to bicker about who read how much of what. Read a lot of that stuff in the 1960's along with Marx, Engels and Lenin and Mao ... eventually I dismissed them all as paper tigers of human development, sorry. Keep reading, but for my money they all became obsolete two generations ago, even though we are still living with the consequences of attempt to implement their ideas. The development of third world poverty in the 20th century is the proof they were dead wrong.

Dec 5 2012:
If there have been no successful attempts in the past to establish anarchist nations what were the failure modes? Did they fail because of under-developed technology, law, ethics, science and societies?

Dec 5 2012:
Requested proof of ignorance follows:
I have no idea: who Robert P. Murphy, Mises, Menger, Rothbard. J.B. Turbot, Adam Smith, or Thomas Woods are; what Praxeology is; how repeated attempts to amend the constitution via legal and ethical means can be swept under the rug and forgotten; and finally, I have no idea what women want. More upon request. Case closed?

Dec 5 2012:
RE: "Thank you for your answer."
The only thing between us and ignorance is itemizing things we don't know? Ah yes, the old illusion of omniscience. By the way, I'm so old that it was the word "outdated" in the OP that attracted my deficit attention! Learn and enjoy!

Dec 5 2012:
"Please indulge my ignorance. In recorded history has there ever been a viable, enduring anachist society? If yes, what happened to it?"

Southern Somalia is an almost anarchist state with only a judiciary and competing "private sector" armies for hire, it's a veritable paradise, if genocide, hunger and abject poverty are your thing. Hunter-gatherer tribes are not and never have been anarchist: they had elected tribal councils.

"You do understand that anarcho-capitalism is not anarchy?"

Pat is right on this on: anarchism wants to abolish all authority, anarcho capitalism wants to preserve the authoritarian rules that benefit billionaires (like the right to form a limited liability corporation and transferable money) while doing away with such pesky rules that outlaw child labor and pollution.

Dec 5 2012:
When the Supreme Court involved itself in a bloodless coup e-etat (Mc Culloch v. Maryland) and it assumed unconstitutional powers. it threw out the constitution as the law of the land and led to all that we see in government today.

Thomas Jefferson said that it would lead to tyranny by oligarchy, and it has. (Oligarchy - government by a privileged few) As the new non-constitutional government was given all-powerful status, unless the Supreme Court intervened, government was quickly sold your rights and freedoms to the highest bidders, who would later be called the Robber Barons. The modern day Robber Barons (the military-industrial complex complete with its banksters) have become a plutocracy (government by the wealthy). As the plutocracy and the oligarchy are fast friends, we live under what is called a Plutarchy (a combination of the two).

Now to get back to your question. The USA government is already more of an evil than a good. (People from other countries can speak of their own governments)

You say that morality is common, but I suggest that you are not paying attention. IMmorality is common. Morality is nearly non-existent.

By the way, the judiciary is a form of government. It's a poor government, but a government.

Dec 5 2012:
That is the difference between the Government system and a system of law. People elect and can easily remove the people that they support threw their voting, basically you must consider technology and science as an aspect in running the country.

Dec 5 2012:
I have been considering this point and I feel that eventually government will naturally decay to this position as a fomr of governing or people could induce change themselves. The question of the matter is if the crutch of government is ready to be taken off yet, and if our readiness is an indicator to do so.

Dec 5 2012:
I don't disagree entirely. I assume you are talking about Anarcho-capitalism. We do need the rule of law and a defense and a police force but Krisztian argues that this could be done by a private company. Considering the corruption that the U.S. faces today from government, that will probably be it's demise, what do have to loose? Although I would like to give the constitution a try as it has not really been followed for a 100 years or so.

Dec 5 2012:
"A governmental system can be removed with the only the judiciary system remaining."

The judiciary IS a form of government and to make new laws or update old ones, as you'll have to do in a changing world (btw, many existing business concepts are arbitrary constructions: it is not self-evident that when you invest in a business you are not liable for that business or that credit default swaps don't constitute fraud, so who are you to decide current business concepts are perfect), you need a legislative branch of government. This is just besides the point that the most powerful businesses would effectively become an executive branch, one that the people don't get to vote for, you might as well sell cabinet positions to the highest bidder.

One way such a world could implode would go as follows: a bunch og big corporations pollute the environment twice as much as the environment can handle, the result will be that 80 years later the Earth will become uninhabitable, the corporations do have access to technology that could cut their pollution in half, but that costs them part of their current profit, no corporation is willing to implement the technology without all the others doing so as well, for fear of losing marketshare and profit, they also have little motivation to hold an industry conference where all the big corporations would agree to implement the technology simultaneously because a) 80 years from now all the shareholders and executives will be dead (if this causes even one corporation to not care then there can be no deal), b) the corporations don't trust each other enough and c) competitors could pop up and steal marketshare, this is where a complete government could have forced regulations, but since only a judiciary exists the Earth is doomed. Having an arbiter solves so many problems in game theory that we really can't do without one in real life.

Dec 5 2012:
The judiciary system is not a form of government; it is a branch of a government. It can be independent from government and therefore not government. Remember government is those that govern, the judiciary system is the part of government that decides the ethicality of government as well as the ethicality of public actions. The core rights of the courts will be defined and the people of the courts will be held to up by public non-monetary support. Then to the specifics on the term limit on how to prevent corruption.
Brining me to the Universality of ethics and morality, as we progress ethics does not change they simply become more specific, and being that ethics are almost universally agreed upon in many countries today the rule of law is obvious and simple; becoming more efficient due to the economical efficiency of the market, controlled by the public opinion. Then it comes down to the loopholes and flaws of funding and choices etcetera.
As you said the executive branch is funded by the people directly. So it is impossible for monopolies to exist when people could simply stop funding the government. The “business” is not based on any production besides Executive duties, and it is also easily replaced.
Similar to teachers the people of government will participate with minor wages as filtering the corrupt from the system. Then it goes down to the specifics of the government beginning economically efficient because it is competing in a market.
Voting on laws by the public could replace the legislative branch in our new age of technology. This is done with public popular speakers that are open to public scrutiny and are funded by public non-monetary support, and are similarly easily replacible. Then again the specifics of how they are controlled from corruption and that loops to the judicial systems observation over the public figures ethicality.